Wikidata and Wikipedia

ASECS 2025, DH Caucus Session

Alice McGrath

2025-04-05

Outline

  1. Overview of Wikidata
  2. Structure of Wikidata statements
  3. Queries and other uses

What is Wikidata?

“A collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation”

Linked Open Data

The Linked Open Data Cloud

The Linked Open Data Cloud (view interactive version from lod-cloud.net)

Principles of Linked Data

How does it work?

Concepts

  • Data should be described in a standardized way
  • URIs refer to the definition of a data category

Wikidata statements

  • “The sky is blue”

  • “The sky has the color blue”

  • Semantic triple:

    • Subject - the sky - Q527
    • Predicate - has the color - P462
    • Object - blue - Q1088

Examples

  • Statements about Clarissa: Q980534
    • Instance of (P31) written work (Q47461344)
    • genre (P136) epistolary novel (Q465821)
    • author (P50) Samuel Richardson (Q295941)

Eliza Haywood

  • ID Q1559438
  • Occupation:
    • Novelist
    • Poet
    • Playwright
    • Actor
    • Editor
    • Philosopher
  • VIAF cluster ID: 64027723

Properties (for personography)

What can you do with Wikidata?

The Wikidata API

screenshot of timeline game

The game Wikitrivia by Tom J. Watson uses the Wikidata API

Uses

  • Building open-source web resources
  • Add data and images easily with digital publishing tools like Juncture
  • Enhance a dataset: add Wikidata entity IDs to discover more information
  • Dataset discovery: add identifiers from other data resources to wikidata

Wikidata Queries

Query structure

Queries for an author

Editing Wikidata

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Resources